Knit in Comfort by Isabel Sharpe

“Love is the great ruination of our species. Tennyson got it all wrong.”
    â€œTennyson…”
    â€œâ€˜Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved atall.’” He gulped the rest of his drink, poured out another from the pitcher. “Tennyson never got divorced.”
    Elizabeth frowned at her martini. Everyone she knew whose marriage failed went through temporary insanity. People like her mother never recovered, to the degree where their ongoing misery became a point of pride. “But he must have experienced some loss.”
    â€œA friend of his died. It’s not the same.”
    â€œGrief is grief.”
    He turned toward her, eyelids drooping slightly. “Ever been dumped on your ass, Elizabeth?”
    She rolled her eyes. He wanted her to feel guilty for not being in the club. “I hate suffering contests.”
    â€œI didn’t think so.”
    She laughed. No, she hadn’t been dumped on her ass. She always evolved out of relationships before the man did, was always ready first to move on to the next experience, the next adventure. Not therapy-textbook healthy, but she didn’t know how to adjust wiring that ran so deep.
    â€œBecause if you had been, you’d understand how much more peaceful and healthy it is to keep your pride and your heart intact, your sanity whole and vigorous, your faculties untarnished by the corrosion of anger, pain, jealousy, regret.”
    â€œTherefore welcome to your nightmare. I get it.”
    â€œWhat’s yours?” He quirked an eyebrow when she looked surprised. “C’mon. Everyone has one.”
    â€œWell…I guess mine got to be New York.” She drew her finger around the rim of the glass, but couldn’t get it to sing for her. “Somewhere along the way I stopped existing. Or maybe I finally want to start.”
    â€œSo you’re here to f-i-i-ind yourself.”
    She grimaced at his TV-psychologist imitation. “Yes, ew, cliché. But the shoe fits.”
    â€œBoyfriend left behind?”
    â€œHe’s in England.”
    Again the eyebrow.
    Elizabeth took a deep breath. “He doesn’t know I’m here. We’ll put it that way.”
    â€œYou ran away behind his back. We’ll put it that way.”
    â€œYou ran away too.” She gestured to the sunlit mountains in the distance. “To drink yourself into regular stupors.”
    â€œI say go with your strengths.”
    She grinned at him and blushed when he winked. The yard seemed suddenly warmer and smaller, lengthened shadows promising intimate darkness. Romance was not what she had come over for.
    â€œThe radio said you left your job at Boston U?” She shook her head, answering her own divert-the-tension question. “No, I must have misheard. You wouldn’t quit.”
    â€œYou think not?”
    â€œI’d bet the rest of my gin.” She took another sip of the drink, which was going down more and more easily. “Work is your ultimate squirrel-proof bird feeder.”
    He chuckled. “You’re right. I’m taking a sabbatical to escape my wife’s very public humiliation and our therefore very public divorce. While I’m here, I’m writing a novel, every word of which is my own. The book will be published and sell twenty-one copies, ten to me, ten to Megan, one to Ella.”
    â€œTwenty-two.” She waved her hand. “I want one.”
    â€œAnd one to you.” He shoved his hand through his dark hair, rumpling it further. “Inconceivable, how the reading public survives without my brilliance, but apparently it does.”
    While the same public had gobbled up his wife’s cheating. “So make this an absolutely amazing book no one can put down. It’ll become a best seller, and on a book tour you can meet a sexy, brilliant woman and not only believe in love again but live happily ever after, while your ex-wife dines alone on her